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About Ricoh Innovations

RII was founded in 1997 as a California subsidiary of Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Tokyo), with the challenge of creating new technology and business opportunities for the worldwide Ricoh Group. 

How do you do that?  How do you use a Silicon Valley base to create opportunities for a $20 billion global corporation?

We’ve gone about it in a variety of ways, starting with a corporately-funded technology research center and spinning up innovative activities as we dream them up.  To list just some of these, over the last 10 years we’ve:

  • Started a venture fund that delivered a combination of strategic and financial returns.
  • Started our own subsidiary company to design, manufacture and market Ricoh’s first information appliance.
  • Started a customer research center that combines market research, extreme programming and ethnographic observation to uncover new customer value.
  • Started a non-profit organization to seed an ecosystem supporting collaborative development of new services.

Sometimes we say, partly—but as you see from this list not entirely—in jest, that if a new idea is not immoral, illegal or too brutally expensive, we might try it if it offers an attractive risk-reward ratio.

Throughout our history, we have maintained a strong research program that provides both seminal ideas and the technical foundation for these and other innovations. We also maintain close collegial relations with Ricoh’s technology and marketing staff in the US, Asia and Europe. Judging from the string of results we’ve had in our first 10 years, we’re optimistic that the next 10 will be even better.